American Intelligence Test #17 – A Minimum Sage for Americans

Now here’s the thing about the big debate in Congress and across the political landscape on the minimum wage, it may not be clear to those engaged in the debate whether they know much of anything about what they are debating. This doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the words themselves, they do know what each means separately and some know what the combined set refers to at the most simple and primitive level. However, given how highly you rate Congress in general, what would make you conversely consider that they are going to be likely to understand this issue? Do you even think that you understand this issue? Are you comfortable relying upon these minimally sage representatives to both be smarter than you and to do the right thing?

The Minimum Wage issue is an important societal test. It puts before you a question that has far reaching implications and consequences, and thus is one of those ‘laws of physics’ problems that you may think doesn’t impact you much unless you are a minimum wage earner. However the ‘laws of physics’ aspect of a minimum wage are very big because the ‘cause and effect’ impact is recursive in nature. So if you are going to put your trust in politicians, Republicans or Democrats, then you better be sure that they comprehend this issue properly and those unavoidable consequences that result from their particular action that set into motion the consequences that you, I and everyone else will live with and have to be accountable for like it or not.

So if you had to decide on whether to set a minimum wage amount now, what would your sage decision be? Would you increase it, keep it the same, lower it, or eliminate it? Your answer to this question should be decided now, and you can make a note for yourself about your basic rationale for your determination. Got your answer? OK, now you can choose to change it as you proceed with the test; but wouldn’t that be basically cheating yourself, treating you the same way that politicians treat you? The following test asks a couple questions and you should answer them in terms of what you think the right answer is, not what the right answer is based on what the decision you just made about the minimum wage was. This is a little tricky because you might feel that you ought to have answered differently but try to be honest with yourself, no politician is ever going to do that and it will be a refreshing experience.
Let’s begin impacting the American economy.

Question 1:   The lower the minimum wage the more competitive the US is with the rest of the world.   True  False

Question 2:  Increases in the minimum wage produces higher unemployment. True   False

Question 3:  Minimum wages are forcing a redistribution of wealth from middle to lower-income individuals?   True   False

Question 4:   Keeping minimum wage levels low promotes the general economy.   True   False

Question 5:   The percentage of people receiving the minimum wage is constantly growing and placing an increasing burden on the economy.   True    False

The Critical X-Question:  If keeping the minimum wage from increasing would help the economy and job growth then logically wouldn’t keeping all wages lower be even more effective in supporting economic growth and job creation?    Yes    No
Would reducing wages and bonuses to the top 1% be proportionally more beneficial?  Yes   No

It’s over. The answers below are referential, that is they try to give some additional info that may give a perspective of why I have judged them to be the proper answers. The real ‘cause and effect’ forces of minimum wages are much more complicated then I suspect even those who study this issue are capable of comprehending. That people disagree is not surprising but that we don’t recognize and admit that we don’t understand most of what is really at issue is not worthy of us.

Answers:

1. False.  These jobs are not a significant portion of the income population. The work involved is not highly related to international competition as it is more often related to local job situations that are not subject to international competition.

2. False. There is no empirical evidence that increasing the minimum wage has a negative effect upon employment. The slight increase in income at the lower income level may actually increase demand on businesses that both employ and depend upon consumer demand from the lower income population. This emphasizes the Henry Ford principle of workers are also consumers, an unusual and unexpected insight from a leader of capitalism.

3. False.  Actually the dynamic existing in the economy is that the middle class is shifting slightly toward the lower income range in the income population distribution. It’s not that the lower income group is acquiring more of societies’ income, rather that the middle class is losing it to the higher income levels.

4. False. Holding minimum income levels constant is actually reducing the true value of the minimum wage level. The minimum wage level is fundamentally flat over its history in real economic value. Thus the logical conclusion absent any additional factor would be that minimum wage changes have had no impact on the economy since it has been constant during periods of good and bad economics.

5. False. Actually, the percentage of the population impacted by the minimum wage is declining. So it’s not getting to be a larger problem; it’s actually becoming of lesser importance, affecting fewer people, and a minor economic issue. This explains why it is increasing in political significance, which is why politicians use it as a divisive issue since they are spending a lot of time talking about something that is of meaningless substantive value but perceived as highly important by a large portion of the voters who don’t know much about reality.

X-Question. Yes to both. If lower wages to one part of the income distribution is beneficial then it is logical that it would generalize to all segments of the income population. I would propose that Congress should dismiss its efforts to raise the minimum wage and replace it with a new economic concept about which they are ill-informed, ill-equipped to manage, and ill-suited to have any say over and present and pass a law that establishes a Maximum Wage for the nation. This would create an entirely new political issue over which the idiots in Congress could wage their inane debates. Or as members of Congress would understand: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

American Intelligence Test #16 – Search / Save: Are Both Privacy Violations?

If you want your privacy protected what exactly would you expect, require or demand? US District Judge Leon has decided that the government gathering and collecting personal data, in this case phone records, is a violation of the 4^th Amendment. CEOs of a number of our largest technology companies have requested the Administration to reform the US’s surveillance practices. Certainly this issue is an important one; and one worthy of much study, discussion, debate and judgment. Now there will be a lot of talking about the issue that guaranteed; but talking is not study, discussion, debate or judgment. And the public will ultimately reap the fruit from this seeds planted in our democratic fields.

Surely this is a simple issue, a clear and easy question to answer, and an item that all of us can get our minds around and be together on. Of course that will require all of us to see this question in the same light and come to the same understanding of what it means to be on one side or the other. So maybe to begin some thoughtful contemplation on this question would not be a bad idea; perhaps there might be a payoff in the end from knowing what we are choosing to do or not do. Given the simple nature of the issue this shouldn’t be a problem. We all agree to the answers to these easy questions, right? Or properly put, you believe that everyone else agrees with what you think the right answer is?

When you select what your correct answers to the following questions are then you’ll also be sure that we all share those same answers. However, if when you’re finished you are also sure that there are a lot of folks that won’t agree with your correct answer then that’s a likely indication that this is a question that requires a great deal of thought by even those who are sure they are right.

Question 1:   To invade your privacy is there a requirement for the government to know who you are? Must they have an actual interest in you as a specific individual?                      Yes    No

Question 2:  If a legitimate subject of a government investigation were to become connected to your path thorough life, is it an invasion of your privacy should for the government to collect information about them that by default contains information about you?                                Yes    No

Question 3:  If someone were to follow the garbage trunk that picked up your garbage, follow the truck to the dump and sort through the trash to pick out information including data about you; would that be an invasion of your privacy rights?                Yes or No
What if they did this every week?            Yes or No

Question 4:   The government has an enormous amount of data about everyone already (not like the phone records folks are in an uproar about). Currently this data is not used to seek out any indicators that would be useful in identifying ‘persons of interest’ who may be engaging in suspicious behavior. Is the possession of this information an invasion of your privacy? Remember to consider that there was a reasonable justification for the government to have the data for its original purpose; the question is whether just having it with no effort being made to use it constitutes a violation of privacy?                               Yes or No

Question 5:  The government engages in an analysis of a massive collection of data to determine if there is a connection between a known group of terrorists and an unidentified contact in the US who is assisting them in coordinating an attack. The records searched include every phone call made into or out of the US. Thus every call that you made is by definition included, but no connection was established.

A.      Was your privacy violated?                                                             Yes or No

B.      Since a computer did this, did it violate your privacy?               Yes or No

C.      Is it the existence of your records that invades your privacy?   Yes or No

D.      Does it matter who holds the records, and as long as it isn’t
the government then it’s not a violation?                                    Yes or No

E.       If I looked at every record of every person in the US and except
for one person (not you) didn’t know who the records represented
have I violated everyone’s privacy?                                              Yes or No

The Critical Question “X”:  If the collection is impersonal, detached from anyone in general, and not used in connection with a pre-identified individual without a court approved warrant is that an invasion of privacy?          Yes or No

So given the clarity of the issue the answers are obvious, correct?

You are done, and you can now decide if you think we will have a collective public agreement. If it helps, here are what I think the reasonable answers would be.

Answers for all questions are No.

The dimension of this issue that needs to be factored in is whether possession of data is a violation? The 4^th Amendment is a protection against unreasonable searches. While Madison would have some serious concerns about the government indiscriminately searching information to see if the government can find something to use against you when you are a pre-defined target that they are “after”, I can’t say that he would see searching for data that is not about you but about everyone. In this context, you are not relevant. You are nothing more than a fleeting non-match in a computer program; just another binary field that has no meaning or interest to the machine.

The issue of privacy isn’t the data here. The privacy issue is the intentions of those who have chosen to do a search. If they have the intention to invade your privacy then using the data is a violation. But without that intention is it?

Now I am not asking you to trust government. I would hope you wouldn’t trust the technology companies to the same degree. Certainly don’t trust politicians. But since we have to decide what our society is to permit and what it is to protect, don’t we have to be “eternally vigilant in the protection of our liberties”? So we have to deal with the complexity of the world. Don’t make this a simple problem to answer. It isn’t. And we don’t have an answer yet.

A Thought on the Republican Party and Its Progeny - The TEA Party

Witness the political organism in mid-evolution. King's efforts may be nothing more than the normal response to the TEA party by its progenitor Repubican party in terms of the survival of the fittest. The political environment is not capable of sustaining both given the competition for the resources that each needs to survive at the level that it seeks: being the sole entity that will exist as the Republican party into the future. This competition isn't a bad thing, it's just what happens organically as the each political cell attempts to establish its dominance for the food of politics: money and power.

What emerges will be a creature of the Republican zietgeist in the party constituents, or at least those that have the influence over the decisions that formulate future Republican policies. This new Republican creature may be an evolutionary dead-end or it may spring forth as a vital and prolific group that overtakes our governance. Perhaps the two contending organisms will diverge and evolve into two separate and incompatible species that are constantly at each other until one is pushed into extinction.

The interesting question is whether whatever emerges in the end is an entity that is symbotic with our American values and freedoms or is a virulent cancer that will eat away at the nation's democratic foundations until it has destroyed the very social body that gave it birth.

I suspect that which path is followed will depend upon whether the organism applies intelligence, integrity, honesty and compassion to its behaviors. Time will tell. Evolution after all is indifferent to what you want, it only provides what you choose to do and the inevitable consequences that flow from those choices.

Who's Over-Paid Here?

Comment on several news outlets articles regarding: College Presidents' Pay

You may have seen a news article with a title like:
-  At several private colleges, president’s payday surpasses $1M
-  Report: Many private college presidents make $1M

Besides your article’s point that salaries for private colleges’ presidents and other executives have increased and that there are 17% more than there were last year, I find the information lacking a salient degree of appropriate informative rigor and intellectual completeness. To be honestly helpful to your readers it would be relevant to provide them with some comparative basis and referential data upon which to assist them in putting this report into a proper perspective. So this is a ‘teachable moment’, as one of the popular performance improvement concepts asserts, that could benefit both media producers and the reading public.

First, the 17% increase sounds like a lot. If I earned 17% more salary or income from investments this year versus last year I would consider that very good and impressive performance. However, I would be less impressed, and it would be significantly less meaningful if my salary was $100 and is now $117 or my investments were $1.00 and is now $1.17. So is the number of presidents that crossed that magic threshold really impressive or only ‘out of context’ apparently impressive? If it represents 6 individuals would readers be more underwhelmed; consider that 6 out of 500 private colleges is a staggering 1.2% increase in millionaires amongst these CEO-like individuals. Now this statistical clarification doesn’t address the question of whether private college presidents are generally paid more than would warranted, but the information provided is well equally insufficient in establishing a relevant assessment on that question either. So what exactly is the point that the 17% is intended to make?

Second, the fact that there was a 17% increase in the number of private college millionaires from 36 before this year to 42 now is perhaps explainable for reasons that are not overly unexpected and may be completely valid and predictable if the starting salary level before their current year increase represented nothing more than a normal ‘keeping pace with inflation’ or COLA increment. What was the average percent increase that each of these 6 individuals received that pushed them over that magic one-million dollar threshold. If they were already earning $975,000.00 then they got a 2.6% raise. Not overly impressive if that’s all that was producing this astonishing result. Now lacking the information that would allow me to know what the underlying mathematical ‘cause and effect’ phenomena is, I am left wondering does your article inform me, educate me, provide me with a rationale for taking a position, or creating a basis for others to question the judgments of the private colleges’ regents or boards in this and related matters.

Lastly, what other factors play into the salaries that these institutions’ presidents are behind the justification and value of paying them such salaries. Now if their arguments are generally that in order to get qualified individuals of the caliber that they need is their basic argument then I would contend that they are either clueless regarding how to efficiently and effectively perform the fiduciary responsibilities that their positions require, or that they are individually or collectively benefiting from this administrative pay-scale educational counter-part to ‘grade inflation’.

So I don’t question the facts in your article, but I think after reading this you might agree that there were one or two other worthy and salient pieces of data that could have served the readers, your organization and yourself better if they had been thought about in the preparation of the article. Don’t feel that this assessment is solely directed at you, I assure you that you are just an unfortunate data sample from the complete universe of new media producers.

Losing My Insurance – Not the Song Title

The President apologized and Congress is looking into who to blame for the flawed implementation of the Healthcare Exchanges. I don’t know why the President apologized or Congress is looking for whom to blame. Everything about the healthcare efforts that have taken place over the last four plus years has been an exercise in incompetence and in politics before duty or public service. Now don’t think that this is directed at the Democrats alone, the Republicans are substantive contributors to the typical waste and ineptitude that we have come to expect of our government. You may want to blame your particular party of the opposition but that’s not an assessment rather it’s one of the contributing factors in the poor quality and value that Congress and the Administration that have proclaimed to serve the public’s interests are delivering – the Healthcare Exchange being just the current headliner.

One of the President’s errors was in not knowing the difference between defining the goal versus implementing the methods of attaining the goal. These are not the same tasks and they do not require nor depend upon skills, capabilities and talents that are shared in common. Implementation is not a political act. It is not a committee process nor is it an endeavor that can be performed by individuals who are unwilling to force decisions on how to adapt the goal to the reality of the environment in which the implementation will or must take place. The President should not be apologizing that unforeseen and undesired consequences have resulted from the ACA’s impacts, but he should be apologizing for allowing the implementation to proceed without anyone understanding the consequences that the law would cause or would allow to be used by healthcare industry players who saw opportunities use the law to their benefit at someone else’s expense. The President should have realized that there should have been a “devil’s” advocate focus looking at how unintended consequences would produce undesired results.

But the President isn’t alone in being responsible for problems with the law, the Healthcare Exchange or the plethora of future unintended consequences that will bleed out over time. Congress (Republicans and Democrats alike) is actually more responsible and more involved in creating the healthcare mess that their efforts have produced through their ineffective, inefficient, and incompetent understanding of the issues, situations, and environments in which the ACA would have to function and exist. Instead of focusing on how to craft a Healthcare program and national policy Congress spent its time and efforts in rank bickering, seeking to obstruct the other side from winning some ideological item, playing to political campaign strategies, and believing that they actually knew what the interests of the American people were.

Congress should have been spending its time on crafting the law so that the law would have the anticipated objectives codified into its structure and so that there were defined responsibilities and requirements on achieving performance, cost and quality improvements; and on rewards and penalties for over-performs versus under-performers. Congress failed to see that their responsibility was not to know how to make the healthcare program or system work but to require that it perform, improve and advance the healthcare for Americans. Congress failed in legislating the law, in defining an effective funding mechanism for the law, in providing an oversight of its implementation, and in affecting no changes to the law to improve it since it was passed.

The President’s apology should have been an all-inclusive, government-wide and bipartisan admission that the Government once again failed the American people. Those who love the law failed to deliver, those who hate it failed to show how to make it work, and those who didn’t pay attention failed to remember that without the attention of someone who cares about the results the results you get are assured to be different than the ones you wanted.

The Supreme Court Doesn’t Have a Prayer: Prayer and the Government

One must have sympathy for the Supreme Court Justices when they are dealing with an issue that in all likelihood is beyond their abilities. Whether you are a Constitutional ‘strict interpretationist’ or of the Jeffersonian view of ‘belonging to the living’ there is no foundational answer to this dispute. People can, and as evidenced by the current case before the Court do, argue every conceivable position for supporting their individual view and interests. Despite this inherent conundrum the Court elected to put this issue on their table and agreed to render a Constitutional decision for the nation. So this may turn out to be a self-inflicted wound.

Whether the Court makes a broad, narrow or side-stepping decision remains to be seen; but I believe that this is exactly the right kind of issue that deserves to be addressed by the Court as it intersects with a number of our Constitutional rights and the role of our government (at the federal, state and local levels) in our society. Enmeshed in this issue are individual rights, religious freedom, separation of church and state, safeguarding minority rights, privacy, censorship, freedom of speech, and equal treatment under the law. So given the broad expanse of our civil structure that falls within the reach of this issue, we can be guaranteed that there will be a notable number of our citizens who will be displeased with the consequences of whatever decision is produced.

Surprisingly there is also an opportunity for the Justices, or at least a majority of them, to approach their decision in an unexpected and insightful way. The Court doesn’t want to get involved in “parsing” prayer for what is acceptable and what is not, nor in creating a societal issue that will raise the issue into the realm of another divisive political issue for our legislative lemmings to follow each other over the cliff. The resolution for the Justices would be to not come down on the side of what is restricted or what is allowed but rather what is required to fulfill all dimensions that societal contract. The Court could set a new course for the proper handling of the divisive positions that different population factions have in such cases where someone want to pit their favorite right or freedom against that of someone else.

The answer to such careless disputes is not to try and determine who is right or who isn’t; because no one is either and that is why this issue creates the mess that it almost surely will.  If we value our rights and freedoms then surely we accept our corresponding responsibilities that entitle us to those rights and freedoms. If you are to choose to include a prayer in a governmental activity then anyone who has their own individual religious orientation should have their own prayer (or statement of belief or non-belief) incorporated into the same proceedings; after all, individuals have an equal right to their views. Before the evocation of prayers, it should be necessary to affirm that the governmental position on any and all views expressed in these prayers are considered of no official value or importance but merely serve to allow citizens to engage in some of our civil rights despite their irrelevance to the proceedings at hand. Because the freedoms are individual in nature, as I don’t believe that the Constitution establishes any group-only based rights, there should be no use of collective terms like ‘we’ or ‘us’ nor should there be any actions required or requested of individuals like standing or ‘bowing of heads’.

Now since this ‘inclusiveness’ principle will not ensure that any given governmental group might not intentionally or inadvertently discriminate against someone by failing to properly accommodate their freedoms into the proceedings there should be a pre-established penalty for such violations. Now there is no reason to believe that jail sentences are a reasonable or prudent punishment; rather there should be a value paid for infringing upon an individual’s rights. The penalty should be paid by those governmental officials who participate in the actions that violated someone’s rights and an equivalent amount to the sum of the officials’ fines would be paid by the governmental entity that the officials represent. The fines would be paid to the individual or individuals whose rights were infringed. Officials would have to actively withdraw their support or endorsement of all prayers before they begin or be subject to the charge of violation of rights.

The level of fines would probably be appropriately scaled on the basis of the number of citizens that the official represented. Thus at the local level fines might be $10K, at the state level at $100K, and at the federal level at $1M per infraction.

Under this system government entities are thus motivated to prevent the violation of anyone’s rights, and to be inclusive in their recognition of every citizen’s freedoms. Of course, there would be no requirement or necessity for a governmental entity to allow prayers to be part of their proceedings as it is not a function of government and thus merely a permitted practice if conducted in a civil and non-endorsed manner.

Free Speech Equals Money, Doesn’t Quite Equate

The Supreme Court is reviewing a case challenging the political contributions limits law. This is a sequel to the challenge made that corporations were people and could spend more on political contributions and causes. The current case focuses on the question of whether the current limits on political contributions are a violation of an individual’s freedom of speech rights. The odds-on favorite decision is for the Court to rule in favor of the plaintiff that it infringes upon his free speech.

The questions that won’t be asked and argued before the Court include what I suspect the Founding Fathers would consider the more significant and important ones. Thus while there are strict interpretation advocates on the Court, they are likely to have a blind eye to worrying about the intentions of the founders on this question as it might cause cognitive dissidence in a non-adaptive mind.

If we consider the easily understood position that money equals speech then it makes perfect sense that limiting the money that an individual chooses to expend toward their political goals is the same as preventing them from expressing their views, and hence their speech. More money allows you to basically shout louder which as we know in watching politicians is always an improvement in the value and virtues of their speech. Maybe money is speech because it allows you to buy someone who will speak on your behalf so you don’t have to; and in the case of politicians we know that you can buy them to say whatever you want them to. Perhaps more money is better characterized as a way to insure that more people listen to your views if for no other reason than sheer repetition of the message in the media distribution systems. But no matter how you characterize it, more money provides a direct, clear and easily associated substitute for speech. So just like everyone has the right to speak their views and opinions, and make their arguments for or against something, and to defend themselves against the opinions of others; being able to contribute money to someone’s political campaign is effectively the same thing.

And just like free speech, money is available to everyone equally. You and I can donate any amount of money that we chose to express our views, we are free to speak on an equal basis with anyone else. There is no bias in allowing someone with money to gain an advantage and privilege in having their speech attended to where someone with funds would be limited to not being able to have their views heard.

But if money is the same as free speech, and free speech is the right of every American, and not to be abridged by the government shouldn’t every American have the same rights? We should all be able to have our views expressed in comparable ways, right? So if someone donates a million dollars to a party that I believe is on the wrong side of an issue and the donated funding is used to present that party’s side to the public, my views should be presented to the public on an equal basis. Now given I don’t have a million dollars the political parties are just going to have to find a way to ensure that my speech is keep on par with their money (which is equal to speech).

Now if money is speech then politicians and parties should be willing to provide me with the same access and consideration that they will provide a money contributor. When they call and ask for a donation, they don’t accept my views or positions as having value and of being sufficient to grant me access. They treat money very differently than free speech.

And that is one of the principles, and principled, differences that the Court needs to consider. Money constitutes something very different than speech, ideas or rights. Money is a media of exchange that is meant to establish a means of trading one thing for another, to place a value on what I am getting for what you are giving up. The issue about money has nothing to do with anyone’s freedom of speech. It may be connected with some other right or freedom, but speech isn’t it.

The issue of money before the Court should be directed at whether there is a Constitutional basis for allowing or prohibiting money to be used to purchase the government? The effort of the wealthy to influence the political process is not new, it is not exclusive to our political system (any more than our system is exempt from it), and it brings consequences to our system of government when allowed and when permitted. As with many aspects of our society, the secret to America’s system is in finding checks and balances, in accommodations and compromises, and in protecting all members of our society from the majority whether the majority is counted in number of voters, or amount of money owned or controlled, or along any of the dimensions that America has present in its social amalgam (race, gender, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation, …). Simply equating money to free speech is the act of a Court that has lost its responsibility to preserve the Constitutional principles that take precedence over the small and narrow minded attempts to gain influence at the expense of our free and democratic system. Politicians already listen to money. Encouraging them to listen to only big money is diminishing the influence of the non-wealthy minority. This can only lead to circumstances and conditions that weaken America and perhaps render it not a democracy but an oligarchy of wealth. Given the incompetence of Congress to protect the nation from their own parties, how would they ever be able to protect the nation from those who own them?